The Cold Case Files (12 page)

F
orty-two-year-old Englishman Brooke Pickard was abducted by a group of armed men at a beach car park in Co. Kerry at around 11.20 a.m. on Friday
26 April 1991. He has not been seen since. It’s believed Brooke was lured to the car park near White Strand beach on the Ring of Kerry by someone he knew. Garda investigations to date suggest
Brooke was helping someone who had apparently run out of petrol, when a group of armed men suddenly appeared from the side of a vacant holiday home. It’s known that five minutes before he
vanished, Brooke and another man bought £3 worth of petrol from a pump at O’Leary’s shop in Castle Cove, the small village where Brooke, his wife and four children had been living
for almost eight years. After buying the petrol, which he poured into a large can, Brooke and the other man got into Brooke’s blue van and drove a short distance down to the car park at White
Strand. It would seem Brooke believed he was simply helping someone who needed to get their car started, but within seconds of arriving at the car park Brooke was attacked, bundled into his own van
and driven away.

Just moments before the abduction, a young girl who was riding her pony on the main road nearby saw Brooke and his passenger drive into the car park. The girl didn’t recognise the
passenger but had seen someone like this man walking in the village a short time earlier. However, the girl knew Brooke and he gave a wave and a smile and said hello. Brooke was well-known and
well-liked in the area. He was a Yorkshire man who fell in love with Ireland and together with his wife Penny had renovated a farmhouse to fulfil a dream of raising their family in the
countryside.

The young girl was moving slowly on horseback as she watched Brooke drive over to an orange-coloured car in the car park. Suddenly she saw a masked man running out a laneway at the side of the
holiday home nearby. He was wearing a balaclava and was beckoning with his hand to someone behind him. The man was moving quickly towards Brooke’s van. All of a sudden the masked man saw the
girl and he stopped and stared at her. He was only about 15 yards away. The girl, now very frightened, turned around on her pony and headed away immediately. She would later tell her friends what
she had seen, but they assumed it had been children playing. It seemed so absurd to think that armed and masked men would be found in the middle of the day in the sleepy Kerry village of Castle
Cove.

The sighting of Brooke Pickard by this young girl is the last definite sighting of him. From information gleaned during the subsequent Garda investigation detectives now believe that within
seconds of parking his van in the car park, Brooke was attacked, beaten and bundled into his own van. Detectives have information to suggest that up to five men may have been involved in attacking
Brooke and that he put up a strong fight, and was only subdued when he was struck on the head with the butt of a gun by one of the gang. Both Brooke’s van and the orange car were driven out
of the car park a short time later. Brooke’s van would later be found burnt out 27 miles away in a remote forested location close to Knocknagapple Mountain. The orange car which is believed
to have been used to entice Brooke into the car park was later abandoned in the grounds of Limerick Regional Hospital. It had been taken to Co. Kerry from Co. Kilkenny without its owner’s
consent.

A group of men from Northern Ireland are suspected of being involved in the abduction of Brooke Pickard. The attack was not the work of a paramilitary organisation, but some of those involved
may have had previous involvement with the
IRA
or
INLA
many years before. Gardaí still wish to question at least five men with addresses in
Belfast. However, investigations also suggest there are a number of people living in Co. Kerry and Co. Cork who also have information about what happened to Brooke Pickard on that Friday morning
over twenty years ago. These include foreign nationals who have made Ireland their home, and Irish people also. A total of 12 people were arrested during the original criminal investigation,
including two women, but no charges were brought. Brooke Pickard is still officially a missing person, but his family and Gardaí both fear he was murdered soon after his abduction and then
secretly buried.

I met Brooke’s wife Penny in England where she now lives. Penny was forty years old when her husband vanished without trace. Their four children—Lisa, James, Crohan and
Dan—were aged 15, 11, 7 and 5. The impact of Brooke’s disappearance on the entire family has been immense. Penny and Brooke were both from Leeds, and moved to Co. Kerry because they
wanted a complete change of lifestyle, a fresh start and wanted to live in the countryside. They worked hard to build up the farm and they very much enjoyed life in Ireland. “I met Brooke in
1979,” recalls Penny.

Brooke and Penny settled on a beautiful location on the Ring of Kerry between Waterville and Sneem. The farm, with its mature trees, elevated location and sea views, was the type of place they
had always dreamed of. The nearby village of Castle Cove had a shop and pub, a church, friendly people, country air and wonderful views. Brooke had asked an auctioneer to suggest locations where
they might get five acres of land, a ruin and a stream. Of all the locations they were shown, both Brooke and Penny fell in love with a spot at Behaghane, just a mile outside Castle Cove. And so in
1983 they bought an old but sound farmhouse in need of a lot of work, complete with five acres, where they would soon keep all types of farm animals. To the back was a mountain range, to the front
was the view down to the coast just a short distance away. And on a clear day you could look right across where the expansive Kenmare River met the Atlantic Ocean and see the next peninsula to the
south, where the Slieve Miskish Mountains held court. It was perfect. In November 1983 the family moved in. “The first few years were incredibly basic,” remembers Penny.

The Pickards kept a busy farm. They acquired more fields and they kept goats, chickens, ducks and geese. They also had ponies, and Jersey cows and a few sheep. They had a Jersey bull named
Goliath, and they kept a vegetable patch and planted fruit trees. Penny shows me some photos of Brooke, and in one he is smiling for the camera with a large shovel resting on his shoulder. Dozens
of large blocks are piled high to his right and he is wearing wellies, jeans and jumper. It is a simple picture, but conveys the hard worker and happy character that Brooke was. In another photo he
stands proudly with his arm around his youngest son Dan, who is standing on a stone wall outside their home. James and Crohan are also smiling in the picture, as is their older sister Lisa who is
leaning on a half-door looking at her Dad and brothers.

Penny Pickard spent the day of Friday 26 April 1991 doing housework and farmwork, painting a room, and reading the Bible and praying. Normal things, normal pleasures and normal chores on what
was to become the last normal day Penny and her children would have.

On the day Brooke disappeared Penny had no reason to suspect anything was wrong, as he wasn’t expected back until evening. When Brooke left the house that Friday morning he was due to go
and cut turf for the whole day. On a previous occasion there had been a problem with the vehicle and he had not returned home until very late because he’d had to unload the turf and fix the
problem before loading it all up again. So when Brooke failed to show up on the evening of Friday 26 April 1991, Penny thought the same thing might have happened as before. It was an era before
mobile phones so there was no way to contact Brooke, and Penny eventually went to bed. She had cooked a leg of lamb for dinner, and Lisa, James, Crohan and Dan had stayed up with their Mum waiting
for their Dad until around 10.30 p.m. before going to bed. Eventually Penny turned off the oven and went to bed herself after 1 a.m. She was very concerned but could only think Brooke must be on
his way. It was when she woke the following morning at 7 a.m. that she realised Brooke had not come home at all. She woke her daughter Lisa who suggested she ring John, the neighbour that Brooke
had been due to go cutting turf with. Penny rang John and he told her Brooke wasn’t with him, that he had never shown up the previous day. Penny immediately knew something was badly wrong.
Brooke was a stickler for punctuality, for keeping arrangements. It was completely out of character for him to fail to keep an arrangement. However, Brooke had previously gone away to England
without telling anyone in advance, but leaving a note. Penny rang family and friends in England to check if Brooke was there but they had not seen him. She also began asking around the neighbours
in Castle Cove, to see if anyone had seen Brooke, and eventually she met the father of the young girl and heard about masked men being seen with Brooke at the car park at White Strand the previous
day.

Sergeant Michael Griffin took the call at Caherciveen Garda station. A neighbour was ringing on behalf of Penny Pickard. Penny’s husband was missing since the previous day, and she had
just been told about armed and masked men being seen with Brooke in the car park at White Strand. The people who had first heard the girl’s story had assumed it had merely been children
playing, but now it was becoming clear that Brooke Pickard was missing and the armed and masked men at White Strand car park were very real. It was now more than 30 hours since Brooke had last been
seen.

Immediately upon receiving the phone call Sergeant Griffin and Detective Garda Dan Coughlan travelled to Penny’s house and they spent the following hours piecing together what was known
about Brooke’s last movements. Gardaí immediately began a major criminal investigation, and over time would build up a detailed picture of what had most likely happened to Brooke.
There are gaps in the story but, based on solid detective work, good eyewitnesses and the discovery of Brooke’s van in the Kerry Mountains, much is now known or suspected about the abduction
and most likely the murder of Brooke Pickard.

Brooke left his home shortly before 11 a.m. on Friday 26 April 1991. He was looking forward to spending the day getting a trailer-load of turf to heat the house. A neighbour of his was giving
him the turf from a bog near Waterville as a payment for work Brooke had done earlier in the week when he had transported a calf from Castle Cove to a woman in Kenmare. Brooke had told his
neighbour John that he’d meet him around eleven that Friday morning. When Brooke said goodbye to Penny it was a normal day, nothing yet out of the ordinary. Brooke came back into the house
twice, once to get a shovel, and the other time thinking he’d forgotten a shopping list which was actually in his pocket. He was wearing blue overalls and brown leather working boots. He got
into his blue diesel Ford Transit van, it was a distinctive van with a long wheel base and had an English registration number
YNP
231
W
. As he headed
down the lane towards the village, he stopped and called to another neighbour, Brian, to give him the name of a farmer who had some animals for sale. Brian would later tell Gardaí that
Brooke was in good form, was his normal self. Brooke said goodbye to Brian and headed for John’s house across the other side of the village. By chance, from a good distance John actually saw
Brooke leaving Brian’s. From his house John had a clear view across the village and could make out the blue van coming down the lane from Brian’s house. He expected Brooke to arrive at
his door within a few minutes as they had arranged. However, Brooke never showed up. Having left Brian and driven down the lane on his own, and either just before or soon after he pulled onto the
N
70 Ring of Kerry road to enter the village, someone stopped him and apparently asked for help in getting petrol for their car which was at White Strand car park.

It’s believed that the person who stopped Brooke had previously been in the area. They did not live locally, but perhaps knew the best spot to stop Brooke’s van so as to limit the
chances anyone might see them. And it must have been someone that Brooke somehow knew. It must have been someone that he felt comfortable helping. Brooke was the kind of person who might have
helped anyone but the circumstances and the geography indicate that Brooke was assisting someone he knew. The orange car in the car park was situated more than a kilometre to the east of Castle
Cove village, while Brooke’s house was just over a kilometre to the west of the village. Any person who had simply run out of petrol at the beach could have gone to the nearby pump and got
petrol to bring to their car. But someone had effectively sought out Brooke and had asked for his assistance. Brooke was a good mechanic and perhaps the person knew this. Maybe they made up a story
about the car experiencing some other trouble which Brooke might be able to help with, or that there was someone else in the car who wished to speak with Brooke. Whatever the lure that was used, it
doesn’t appear that Brooke was under duress when he picked up his passenger, nor when he stopped a few minutes later and got the petrol in a can from the
BP
pump at
O’Leary’s shop in the village. Nor did he seem under any pressure as he and his passenger drove into the car park at White Strand. The way Brooke waved to the girl on horseback and said
‘hi’ was typical Brooke. It seems that until he pulled his van up behind the orange car at the end of the car park Brooke had no idea of the imminent danger he faced.